A Native American overlooking the newly completed transcontinental railroad in 1868

In the United States, Native Americans are considered to be people whose pre-Columbian ancestors were indigenous to the lands within the nation’s modern boundaries.
These peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups, and many of these groups survive intact today as sovereign nations.

The terms Native Americans use to refer to themselves vary regionally and generationally, with many older Native Americans self-identifying as “Indians” or “American Indians”, while younger Native Americans often identify as “Indigenous” or “Aboriginal.” Which terms should be used to refer to Native Americans has at times been controversial. The term “Native American” has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups, but has not traditionally included Native Hawaiians or certain Alaskan Natives, such asAleut, Yup’ik, or Inuit peoples. Indigenous American peoples from Canada are known as First Nations.

Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of exchange and adjustment between Old and New World societies. Most Native American groups had historically lived as hunter-gatherer societies and preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, which has resulted in the first written sources on the conflict being authored by Europeans.

At the time of first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and mostly Christianimmigrants. Some of the Northeastern and Southwestern cultures in particular were matrilineal and operated on a more collective basis than the Europeans were familiar with. The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rightswith respect to land that were extremely different. The differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations in times of war, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, and social disruption. Even before the European settlement of what is now the United States, Native Americans suffered high fatalities fromcontact with European diseases spread throughout the Americas by the Spanish to which they had yet not acquired immunity. Smallpox epidemics are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations, although estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, from one million to eighteen million.

After the thirteen colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, President George Washingtonand Henry Knox conceived of the idea of “civilizing” Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as U.S. citizens.
Assimilation (whether voluntary, as with the Choctaw, or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasing pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their homelands within established states to lands west of the Mississippi River, accommodating European-American expansion. This resulted in the ethnic cleansing of many tribes, with the brutal, forced marches coming to be known as The Trail of Tears.

Tsar Nicholas II and friend in 1899

Nicholas II (Russian: Николай II) (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last tsar of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of Imperial Russia from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic and […]

A child with artificial legs in 1898

A young girl with her doll and artificial legs in the United Kingdom in the late 19th century. The legs were manufactured by James Gillingham (1839-1924). James Gillingham pioneered the development of articulated artificial limbs. Originally working as a shoemaker, Gillingham first started making artificial limbs after a local man in the town of Chard, Somerset, lost an arm […]

A graduation ceremony in 1895

Photo that may be from the Vassar College taken in 1895. Vassar College is a private, coeducational, liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, the school is one of the Seven Sisters and has a historic relationship with Yale University; it […]

A rare shot of a young Winston Churchill in 1895

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer (as Winston S. […]

Mark Twain inside the laboratory of Nikola Tesla in 1894

Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla became close and long term friends. Their friendship made them spent much time together including much time in Tesla’s laboratory. Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The […]

Construction of the Statue of Liberty in 1884

Construction of the Eiffel Tower in the 1880s

The Eiffel Tower is a wrought iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris,

This is the only known picture of legendary outlaw Billy the Kid in 1879

Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty; also known as William H. Bonney) (September 17, 1859 – July 14, 1881)

Three Archers Japan ca 1870-1880

Kyūjutsu (弓術) (“art of archery”),

This is only known photo of a living Quagga taken at the London Zoo in 1870

The quagga (Equus quagga quagga) is an extinct subspecies of plains zebra that lived in South Africauntil the 19th century.

Bison skulls to be used for fertilizer in 1870

The American bison (Bison bison), also commonly known as the American buffalo,

A Native American overlooking the newly completed railroad in 1868

In the United States, Native Americans are considered to be people whose pre-Columbian ancestors were indigenous to the lands within the nation’s modern boundaries. These peoples were composed of numerous distinct tribes, bands, and ethnic groups, and many of these groups survive intact today as sovereign nations. The terms Native Americans use to refer to […]

Execution of the Lincoln conspirators in 1865

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, April 14, 1865,

Powder Monkey on the USS New Hampshire in 1864

A powder boy or powder monkey manned naval artillery guns as a member of a warship’s crew, primarily during the Age of Sail. His chief role was to ferry gunpowder from the powder magazine in the ship’s hold to the artillery pieces, either in bulk or as cartridges, to minimize the risk of fires and […]

Brighton Swimming Club in 1863

Brighton Swimming club that was formed in 1860 and claims to be the oldest swimming club in England. Brighton is a seaside resort and the largest part of the City of Brighton and Hove situated in East Sussex, England. Historically in the Rape of Lewes in Sussex, Brighton forms a part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. Brighton is […]

Federal ironclad USS Galena showing some battle damage in 1862

USS Galena was a wooden-hulled broadside ironclad built for the United States Navy during the American Civil War.

COLORIZED Lt Custer and Union Troops in 1862

George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1857, where he graduated last in his class in 1861. With the outbreak of […]

A woman waits for the hoops of her crinoline to be finished in a London dress shop in 1860

A crinoline is a stiffened or structured petticoat designed to hold out a woman’s skirt, popular at various times since the mid-19th century.

Samurai ca 1860-1880

Samurai (侍) were the military-nobility and officer-caste of medieval and early-modern Japan.

Lady in a litter being carried by her slaves Brazil in 1860

Slavery in Brazil began long before the first Portuguese settlement was established in 1532, as members of one tribe would enslave captured members of another. Later, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions called bandeiras, originating in […]

A view of Boston taken from a hot air balloon in 1860

World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo The first known aerial photograph was taken in 1858 by French photographer and balloonist, Gaspar Felix Tournachon, known as “Nadar”. In 1855 he had patented the idea of using aerial photographs in mapmaking and surveying, but it took him 3 years of experimenting before he successfully produced the very first […]

1860

Lewis Carrol in 1856

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem Jabberwocky, and the poem The Hunting of the Snark, all examples of the genre of […]

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